Amazon owns the world’s biggest paid-for music streaming service...

Amazon owns the world’s biggest paid-for music streaming service...

It seems a bit odd - and it is, actually - but Amazon right now owns the world’s biggest paid-for music streaming service: it's Prime Music, the ad-free, limited-catalogue tier of Amazon’s music streaming offering, which Prime subscribers get access to (and therefore technically become customers of).

Moreover, Amazon has The Echo, and its voice-assistant Alexa, a powerful weapon against the likes of Apple Music and Spotify which has been designed to put even the most technologically inept consumer at ease. Its great accessibility has made Echo a smash hit: in January, CIRP estimated that over 8m units of the device had been sold in the US since its public launch in July 2015. And Amazon Music Unlimited – and its symbiotic relationship with Echo/Alexa – is defining itself rather differently to Spotify and Apple Music.

Steve Boom (VP of Amazon Music in San Francisco and the exec in charge of making the big calls around the development of Amazon’s service) was interviewed by "Music Business Worldwide" and he explained Amazon’s ambitions in digital music, streaming’s potential to grow globally, the tricky subject of artist exclusives and free vs. paid- plus the small matter of how we’re all going to listen to music in future…

Read the interview clicking here.